In what seems to be a major co-incidence, BlackBerry users across Europe, Middle East and Africa are experiencing issues with their BlackBerry service – on the same day that Apple’s highly-anticipated iPhone 5 launches.

BlackBerry users across Europe, Middle East and Africa are experiencing issues with their BlackBerry service (image: RIM)

While the extend of the problem hasn’t been determined yet, BlackBerry in the UK confirmed the outage on their Twitter account by simply posting “Some users in Europe, Middle East & Africa are experiencing issues with their BlackBerry service.” Which they followed up with a tweet saying “We are investigating and apologise for any inconvenience.”

The majority of users with network issues have reported that it’s affecting BBM, email and internet services but not voice or text.

According to Tech Crunch, “RIM was unable to provide specific details of the cause of the outage, which TechCrunch understands is still ongoing, or details of how many BlackBerry users are affected.”

“We are currently experiencing a BlackBerry service issue impacting some users in Europe, Middle East & Africa. All relevant support teams are working to resolve the issue. We apologize to any customers who may be affected,” Research In Motion, the makers of BlackBerry, said in a statement.

Mobile service provider Vodafone in the UK also confirmed the outage, and released a statement calming customer fears. ”We are aware that some customers are experiencing problems using BlackBerry services such as email, internet and BBM in Europe, Middle East and Africa. RIM are working on fixing this as a priority and we are in regular communication with them. We expect updates shortly.”

According to a BlackBerry spokesperson in South Africa, none of the carriers in South Africa are affected.

*Update*

RIM released a short statement saying that services as apparently been restored. “Our apologies to any customers impacted by the BlackBerry service issue today. We can confirm that services have been restored and are now operating normally.” RIM hasn’t given any reasons as to why the outage occurred, or how many users were affected.